Author: StrangeAgo
7 Terrifying Reports of People Who Operated on Themselves
From amputations performed with pocketknives to appendectomies done on kitchen tables, the newspaper archives are filled with horrifying stories of people who took surgery into…
Weather Wisdom of the Texas–Mexican Border
On the ranches that stretch along the Rio Grande, weather is not small talk. It is food for cattle, grass for sheep, and the boundary…
The History of April: Month of Venus and Awakening Earth
The month of April brings with it the warm breath of spring, a time when the earth stirs from winter’s slumber and bursts open with…
Dances, Pilón, and the “Evil Eye”: Everyday Life on the Texas–Mexico Border, c. 1900–1923
On the lower Rio Grande in the early 20th century, Mexican and Mexican-American families kept close to traditions brought north long before the railroad and…
The Old-World Ways of Gillespie County’s German Texans
Set in the Texas Hill Country, Fredericksburg grew from a mid-1840s German settlement into a town where old customs met a changing frontier. By the…
Cowboy Dances: How the Plains Threw a Party
Before highways, neon dance halls, and coin-operated jukeboxes, the rural West made its own fun. A cowboy dance was not a ticketed event with posters…
Old World Lore of Foundation Sacrifices
Across Europe and well beyond, builders once believed that a structure needed more than timber and stone. It needed a guardian. To make a new…
The History of March: The Month of Mars
March, once the first month of the year in the Roman calendar, is named for Mars, the powerful Roman god of war. As the season…
“Looney Gas”: The Poisoned Promise of Leaded Gasoline
In 1924, a group of workers at the Standard Oil refinery in Bayway, New Jersey, began to suffer bizarre and terrifying symptoms. They twitched uncontrollably,…
Eva Dugan’s Final Drop: The Hanging That Changed Arizona
In the dark early hours of February 21, 1930, Eva Dugan stepped onto the gallows at Arizona State Prison in Florence. Composed and defiant, she…
